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Comment by doener | Hacker News Reader

I‘m amazed every time anew that there are still projects using Sourceforge instead of GitHub/GitLab.

I second that! Always makes me a little nervous too. Wasn't Sourceforge riddled with malware and other "enhancements" for a while?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SourceForge#Project_hijackings...

it was but someone bought it and turned everything around.

Citation needed. The website is still as horrific to use as in times past. It might not have outright malware anymore, but that doesn't make it less painful.

I don't know the current status of SourceForce, but the problem wasn't one of usability of the website.

The problem is that it had a change of owners, and the new owners started bundling non-free spyware and malware into the installers of otherwise free software. Which is way more serious than simply having a website that is hard to navigate.

SourceForge got a well deserved backlash from the community following their underhanded tactics. Not sure what the situation is now.

SourceForge stopped including spyware and malware installers near the beginning of 2016 when new owners took over.

At no point did I say it didn't have malware, in fact, I explicitly acknowledged it.

Yes, but you stressed the (bad) usability of their website, which, while not good, is/was not their biggest sin and pales in comparison.

Here is a post from a couple of years ago by Logan Abbott, the current president of SourceForge:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20750707

At no point did I say it didn't have malware, in fact, I explicitly acknowledged it. I have no interest in reading the comments of that person -- regardless, they already butt-in unrequited to a twitter thread I was in to do some weird PR bullshit.

You wrote "Citation needed" on a topic about malware and even your "acknowledgment" wasn't even that clear as you wrote "It might not have outright malware" - something is either malware or isn't.

So i gave you an answer from the person who is in the best position to answer it.

> they already butt-in unrequited to a twitter thread I was in to do some weird PR bullshit

How is that relevant to this discussion? Nobody even mentioned twitter.

As for the UX, yes it isn't great, nobody claimed it was. But they did make an attempt to improve it, here is how it looked when they bought it (some random project page):

http://web.archive.org/web/20161108001911/https://sourceforg...

(now if the new one is an improvement or not i'm not sure, i think the new one has more user-oriented information "above the fold" despite being larger in size but overall the difference isn't that big)

> You wrote "Citation needed" on a topic about malware

Asking for a citation isn't itself denial

> How is that relevant to this discussion? Nobody even mentioned twitter.

The CEO of sourceforge is so desperate to say it doesn't contain malware that they butt into twitter threads to do unrequited PR.

> But they did make an attempt to improve it, here is how it looked when they bought it (some random project page):

Which is objectively more usable from a UX standpoint than it's current interface.

I too would love for most projects like this to be on GitHub/gitlab.

However, in terms of looking at these things in decades where will git/github/gitlab be in two decades? What will be the new hotness? What evil/shady transgressions will github/gitlab have committed by then?

If history is any guide in a decade people will post the same comment with projects on github/gitlab.

git-the-program/protocol will still be around, as it's in use by Linux and most big projects, and is easy to self host or use in ways not requiring $BIGCORP.

Github could go either way depending on how screwy Microsoft gets, and Gitlab will do their own thing, and could also go either way.

I don't doubt that - the same way CVS, SVN, Bitkeeper, Sourcesafe, etc are still around. Many projects have also migrated from at least CVS -> SVN -> git over the years (and moved all over the place in terms of infra).

Exactly.

FWIW, I expect at least Gitlab, Sourcehut, and Gitea to stick around for a while - It'll require another leap in quality similar to SVN -> git for people to move off of git[0], and being FL/OSS and self-hostable put them in a very strong place imho.

I expect Github to be gone outside of enterprise in about a decade or two though, based on what I've seen looking at history. Microsoft at least will continue using it though.

[0] Not impossible, but I do find it unlikely to happen on a scale of 1 - 2 decades.

Honestly all it would take is for Linus to get pissed at git for some reason - if he were to switch the kernel again likely half the world would follow.

Pretty unlikely considering that if git doesn't do what he wants he probably can get a pr adding the feature accepted ...

I'd be pretty surprised if the creator of git couldn't get a PR to git approved, honestly.

GitHub/GitLab are for developers, SourceForge is for users, notice how one puts code up front and center while the other has a description, screenshots, category information, user reviews, ratings, etc, the most prominent buttons are to download it and get updates about it and at the top the links are about getting the project's releases (Files), reviews, support, mailing list, tickets, news - ie. stuff that are more of interest to end users than developers - and only at the end you have source code access.

Some projects do not even use SourceForge for the code repository but only to host releases, provide mailing lists, forums, etc.

Of course the UX could improve but that is another issue.

I'm amazed every time anew that there are still projects using Github instead of SourceHut/self hosting.

I‘m amazed that you still cannot download/upload "bigger" iso's/files from Github.

Oh and the best thing....no twitter toxicity on sourceforge ;)

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